Date:   5/1/2004 9:50:07 PM ( 20 y ago)
Hits:   4,745
URL:   https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=377691

It must be emphasized that methadone maintenance treatment is a medical treatment for narcotic addiction. Recent research has found that abstinent former heroin users have irregularities within their immune and endocrine systems. However, these irregularities are normalized with methadone maintenance. This further underscores that methadone maintenance is a medical treatment for a medical condition that has sociological and psychological aspects, as do many medical conditions, i.e. heart disease. No other treatment for opiate addiction as is successful as methadone maintenance, resulting in a 92% reduction in heroin use when treatment is appropriately done. No other treatment for heroin addiction can boast such a success rate, and in fact very few other medical treatments have as high a success rate as methadone maintenance.

Programs who have high rates of illicit opioid use are, put simply, "not providing proper treatment." Discharging patients for heroin use is unethical and usually programs which use such tactics are not providing adequate dosage or are using the medication as a tool to manipulate the patient's behavior. Such procedures would be considered unethical in every other realm of medicine, but because drug use has been perceived as a behavioral problem, discharging patients for drug use has been tolerated in methadone treatment.

Imagine how this feels to the patient in treatment. What if you were diagnosed with cancer and went for the usual radiation treatments. You followed everything the doctor told you to do, but in the end the cancer was still growing. Now apply this to methadone treatment: you would be discharged because you did not respond to treatment. If you had cancer would you not want the doctor to try something else, like chemotherapy and if that failed perhaps some new experimental treatment? You would want the doctor to try everything to save your life. The same is true for the methadone patient, if 70 mg doesn't work, then perhaps 80 or 90 or 200 mg will work. For the cancer patient perhaps two radiation treatments will work. But imagine the doctor blaming the cancer patient for not responding to treatment and then discharging them. "If only you had tried harder!" This happens to methadone patients every day, they are blamed for the failures of their programs.

Not only does discharging methadone patients from treatment do a terrible disservice to the patient, but also to the community. Think of the repercussions when a patient is discharged. It is inevitable that they will relapse within a short time and considering the threat of HIV, strain resistant TB, hepatitis and endocarditis the effects that the discharge will have on the family of the patient is tremendous. The patient will no longer be able to support their family because they will be thrown into a state of "drug craving." The crime that one patient will have to commit to maintain their drug use has been estimated to cost society from $150,000 to over $300,000 a year. And if this former patient is arrested, which is very likely, then they will be a ward of the state costing between $30,000 to $60,000 a year. And should this former patient become infected with HIV the cost can be as high as $300,000 a year, and as people with AIDS are living longer the costs are rising dramatically.

Now I ask you, which is better for the person, the community and the state? A methadone patient receiving adequate treatment who supports their family, pays their taxes, pays for their treatment and is a productive member of the community, or a heroin addict who will cost the community money that could well be spent on better purposes?





National Alliance of Methadone Advocates
435 Second Avenue
New York,NY 10010
Phone/Fax: (212) 595-NAMA (6262
 

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